Past tense of smear
regular verb
The past tense of smear is smeared. The past participle is also smeared.
Forms of smear
| Base form (V1) | smear /smɪə(ɹ)/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | smeared |
| Past participle (V3) | smeared |
| Present participle | smearing |
| Third person singular | smears |
Smeared in a sentence
- The artist smeared paint over the canvas in broad strokes.
- Many of these are religious "Sadhus", dressed often in nothing but a loin-cloth, or even less, and their bodies smeared with ashes.1953 November, 'Erca', “Ticket Frauds in the East”, in Railway Magazine, page 778
- The petty misdeeds of his youth came back to haunt him when he ran for political office and his character was smeared.From the entry misdeed
- Tomorrow there would be smeared handmarks on the smooth painted plaster.2011, Harper Allen, Protector with a Past. From the entry handmark
- She smeared it carelessly across her wide mouth and handed it to me.2007, D. M. Ross, chapter 12, in The Holy Bad, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Vanguard Press, →ISBN, page 52. From the entry lippy
Meaning of smear
- verb To spread (a substance, especially one that colours or is dirty) across a surface by rubbing.
- verb To cover (a surface with a layer of some substance) by rubbing.
- verb To make something dirty.
Questions about the past tense of smear
- What is the past tense of smear?
- The past tense of smear is smeared.
- What is the past participle of smear?
- The past participle of smear is smeared.
- Is smear a regular or irregular verb?
- Smear is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: smear (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of smear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/smear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.